


Dance of Phoenix and Dragon

by TheSingingHoneybee



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, Comedy -- hopefully that is actually funny, F/M, Primarily a romance, Reylo - Freeform, Violence, War, lots of political intrigue, romance of the three kingdoms au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 20:37:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6722482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSingingHoneybee/pseuds/TheSingingHoneybee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What was once a unified and prosperous kingdom has fractured into a hundred domains ruled by ruthless warlords. What is left of the previous order is concentrated in the south--a land rich in farmland. The less fertile north is war torn as warlords struggle and betray one another in the hopes of becoming the next Son of Heaven, the next Emperor. Rey is a handmaiden owned by Unkar Plutt and Kylo Ren is the right hand of wannabe "Son of Heaven" Snoke.</p><p>A "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" AU set in a fantasy world heavily inspired by ancient China.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dawn and Dusk

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. So most characters have been "race bent" and are Asian. There are exceptions--but assume Asian if no description is provided. However, I did not play with the names at all. As much as putting given-name+surname names into a Chinese-inspired fantasy story unsettles me, names like Organa Leia are equally atrocious. So, I didn't play with the names. Please forgive this--it is only fanfiction.

Luke watched the water in the pot carefully. After a minute, the first bubble tumbled from the bottom of the pot and escaped upward. It reached the surface and the gas escaped into the air. A minute later, the bubbles were coming up in droves and the surface of the water was beginning to snap and bend. Luke took the rag he had set to the side and lifted the pot careful not to splash the water as he stood. He took the water to the only table in the hut and placed it down beside his teapot. Letting the water rest, Luke carefully measured out prepared tea leaves and let them fall into the pot. He poured the hot water into the pot in a long, steaming stream. The water splashed up the side of the teapot scattering a path of tea leaves, which were quickly washed away as the water filled the pot. Luke set the pot aside and watched as amber began to seep into the clear brook water that he had fetched that morning. Steam curled from the pot and spiraled into oblivion in the hut air.  
  
Luke stretched out a hand and called on the Force. The steam stopped in midair. The light from the window over Luke’s desk caught the steam and made it glisten. But it wasn’t the light that made the steam stand out from the air. The shadows that ran through it and created the warbling of the surface did that.  
  
Luke frowned and let the steam go. It dissipated as if it had never existed.  
  
When the tea had finished seeping, Luke poured a serving into his handle-less, rough ceramic teacup. He only owned one. Luke had nicked it from the last inn he had stayed at before climbing the mountain he was currently living on. The teapot had been harder to smuggle out of the inn.  
  
He took the cup over to his desk. A plain sheet of paper was stretched out on his desk held in place by stones. He had left his paperweights with Leia. Luke took a stick of black ink and began to rub it on his ink stone. When he had ground enough ink, he set the stone aside and added more water to the ink. Luke took a sip of his cooling tea and then pulled a medium sized brush from his brush rack. Gently rubbing a thumb against the tuft of fur at the end, Luke checked the brush for bristles out of place. Deciding that the brush would do, he dipped it into the ink rolling the brush on the stone to make the point sharp and remove the excess ink.  
  
Then he turned his attention to the white of his blank paper.  
  
He hesitated for a second. Just a second before beginning to place flower petals on the paper. He connected the petals with a flick of his wrist. A stem formed and then another flower appeared. Luke added more water to the ink and then added a frog to his paper.  
  
He knocked back the rest of his tea, set his brush aside, and stood. Luke refilled his cup and drank the second cup in three gulps.  
  
A third cup in his hand, Luke turned back to the painting he had just done. It didn’t matter how his technique improved or what accidents happened on the paper, Luke was struck every time by the interplay of the Dark ink and the Light paper. Every time he found himself studying the way the paper eagerly absorbed the ink and how the ink seemed to gleefully sink into the paper—spreading and staining. And yet, it was lovely.  
  
Luke tapped a finger against his teacup.  
  
He still hadn’t decided what it all meant, but he had the uncomfortable notion that everything he had believed before this had been only partially true. Perhaps he was missing something. Perhaps those who had gone before him were missing something.  
  
Luke sipped his tea.  
  
Perhaps he was getting bad tea leaves.


	2. Mortality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet Rey at a difficult point in her life.

This was not the first time Rey had seen a corpse, but it was the first time she had held the hand of the person as their soul slipped away leaving her hanging on to a corpse. The air in the small room hung heavy with the smell of sick and piss intermingling with the perfumed smoke of the cleansing incense that had been burning incessantly in the sick room. Lin had been a friend to Rey—a mother figure to the child who had been sold to pay farm debts. Now Lin’s gray and thinned hair was sticky and plastered to her skull. The deep wrinkles around her face slack as her muscles relaxed in death. The women who sat on the other side of what was once Lin reached out a trembling hand and closed the eyelids.  
  
At the back of the room, one of the young girls let out a sob and was hurriedly ushered out of the room. It was bad luck to cry in the presence of the corpse lest the spirit choose to stick around and comfort the ones left behind. It was never good for spirits to stick around.  
  
A gentle hand was placed on Rey’s shoulder. She turned and met the eyes of the middle-aged servant who wished her attention.  
  
“Water,” she said simply.  
  
Rey withdrew her hand from the corpse’s and stood. Her knees cracked as she stood. Rey had been kneeling for hours. She wove her way through the dry-eyed but pale and mourning men and women who had come to attend Lin’s bed. Sidestepping the pile of shoes at the doorway to the room, she passed through the curtain that served as a door and out into the bright summer sunlight. Dust motes danced in the still air of the courtyard. The girl who had been removed from the room was squatting against a wall at the far side of the courtyard bawling. Her face was red and she struggled for air between sobs.  
  
Rey felt hollow.  
  
She gave the weeping girl a wide berth as she skirted around the courtyard to reach the path that led to the rest of the compound. The well was at the center. She scooped up a bucket from a pile of them against a wall as she walked. A trickle of sweat dripped down her back. It was going to be a blistering summer if it was this hot only a week in.  
  
Her skirts swished around her ankles as she stretched the hems with large, quick steps. No one had thought of the servants’ convenience when they had planned the compound. No. The well was near the rooms of the Plutt family. Unkar Plutt, a minor warlord, owned the land, the food, and most of the people in the city. It was his comfort that decided on where wells were located.  
  
The Lady Plutt and one of her daughters were sitting under the overhang that connected the rooms via outdoor walkways when Rey entered the courtyard. The Lady Plutt was fanning herself while the daughter ran scales on her flute. Luckily, Unkar Plutt was nowhere to be seen.  
  
Rey fetched water from the well and, taking slower steps than before to avoid splashing the water, returned the way she came.  
  
By the time she reached the servants’ courtyard again, the crying girl had calmed down. She sat with her head against the wall with her face turned to the sky and the clouds.  
  
“Do you think Lin is already in the Land of the Dead, or will she have to wait until her body is put to rest?” she asked as Rey went passed.  
  
Rey paused. Turning to face the girl, Rey said, “I’ve been told that they wait.”  
  
The girl nodded. “Then I’ll stay out here. I think I’d cry again if I came back in.”  
  
Rey nodded and entered the sick room.  
  
The arrangement of people had hardly changed. Rey noticed that a few teenagers were missing along with a man. They must have gone to prepare for the funeral.  
  
Rey set the water near the body. The women shooed the rest of the men out of the room and then they began to prepare the body. They removed Lin’s soiled clothes, peeling off the layers and setting them to the side to be burned later. When all the clothes were removed, they gently washed Lin’s skin with rags that had been fetched by another girl.  
  
Rey went for water three more times.  
  
The last bucket was used to wash out Lin’s mouth and to wash her face. One of the women pulled a small bottle from her belt.  
  
“For her skin,” the women said opening it and pouring a yellow pool into her hand. She held the bottle out the Rey who also poured a circle of the oil onto an upturned palm. It was camellia oil.  
  
The expensive stuff—rare in this part of the country.  
  
She passed the bottle on and rubbed the oil into a shine between her palms before beginning to anoint Lin’s skin.  
  
Once Lin had been cleaned and anointed, they dressed her once again. They pulled her nice robe over her limbs and tied it with a belt.  
  
Preparation of the body complete, people began to file out of the room in ones and twos. Only Rey and a few others who had been particularly close to Lin stayed to keep vigil until the time of the funeral.  
  
Now that Rey’s hands were no longer busy, her mind caught up with the circumstances. It took all she had within her not to weep and gasp like the girl who had left the room had done. The longer she knelt by Lin’s side in silence, the worse the feelings got. Her gut was all twisted inside of her. Unkar Plutt had laughed when they had asked for money for the medicine Lin had needed. And now not even medicine could bring her back.  
  
Worse yet, Rey could see this fate as her own. She could see herself living out her days chasing after Unkar Plutt’s children. Cleaning up their messes and doing the girls’ hair until her finger ached. Dodging Plutt to avoid his hungry glances down her body until she was too old to draw his glances any more. She could see herself in Lin’s place—dying because no one could afford the medicine for a cure and the Plutts didn’t care enough to help.  
  
What were they but owned people? Their lives were owned.  
  
Rey let her gaze slide from Lin’s face to her own tightly clenched hands. Rey’s knuckles were white. Her family had promised to come back for her. Someday she would escape all of this. That would not be her fate. Rey had considered running away a hundred times, but every time, her parent’s promise to return for her had held her back. She had a family and they would come back.  
  
They had to.  
  
She couldn’t stay here all her life. She just couldn’t. The very idea made her stomach twist in on itself and her throat tighten.  
  
The hours ticked by and the sun began to set. Rey was surely missing all of her duties. Plutt’s daughters were probably angry. Rey didn’t waste energy hoping that they would manage without her.  
  
As dusk approached, one of the menservants came to inform those standing vigil that the pyre had been built. Rey climbed to her feet and her knees cracked. Several men lifted the corners of the blanket Lin’s body was resting on and silently carried her from the room. Rey followed. A large crowd of servants were waiting just outside the room in the courtyard. They fell behind the body bearers and the group slowly made its way to the outskirts of the town. Silent eyes watched the procession from doorways to courtyards and from windows.  
  
The body was placed on the pyre and one of the bearers lit the wood. The people stood in a semicircle around the pyre.  
  
Someone had asked a monk to come and pray and his chants soothed Rey. They were the familiar funeral prayers that the Force would accept the deceased. That the Force that had resided in them would successfully rejoin with the Force. It was repetitive and Rey found herself mouthing along the words despite her skepticism about the whole religion. She had heard the prayer too often in her life. She had heard it chanted over young friends as well as old, over old men and too many young mothers, over babies, over strong workers caught in accidents.  
  
Rey watched the flames without letting her gaze focus on the body that was within it.  
  
At least Lin was not suffering anymore.  
  
Rey swallowed down a sob, gritting her teeth and shuffling her feet. She stopped mouthing the chant.  
  
Lin shouldn’t have died.  
  
When the funeral was over, Rey held back and let the crowd clear. She whispered a blessing that she had heard a foreign trader once say when parting from a friend and finally turned to go as the sun had set an hour ago. As Rey made her way back into the Plutt’s compound, a young women caught her arm.  
  
“We’re calling an emergency meeting tonight,” she said.  
  
Rey nodded her understanding. “When?”  
  
“Now,” the girl said.  
  
Rey followed her as the girl turned and went. They slipped into the room next to the one Lin had died in.  
  
There were twenty women crowded into the room.  
  
A middle-aged woman, Pei, nodded a silent greeting to Rey and the girl before clearing her throat for the group’s attention. “We must an elect a new leader tonight,” she said.  
  
The women who were part of the all-women combat group began to talk amongst themselves. Lin had been their teacher, their mentor. Rey felt that no one could every replace her.  
  
Rey voted for Pei, who had been Lin’s second in command. It was the logical choice and most women voted the same.  
  
But they did not have practice that night. Instead they shared stories of Lin. Stories of her famous wit. Of her deadly quick hands.  
  
Rey slipped out before the women had gotten more than a few stories in. She ran laps around the courtyard like Lin had made her do a thousand times. She ran until her breath burned and then she wept. Rey collapsed in a shadow between two rooms and wept until no more tears would come.  
  
Would every person she loved eventually leave her? Would every person be taken?  
  
Rey stared at the stars as they came out and wished she could convince them to take her away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I don't have a beta. Please forgive any typos.
> 
> Also, Lin is the old lady on Jakku who sits across from Rey at the washing station.


	3. One Small Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> General Hux needs a favor from Kylo Ren.

He was Kylo Ren, right hand to Supreme Leader Snoke—future Son of Heaven—not a common errand boy. Yet a common errand boy was what he felt like when a crisply uniformed messenger arrived at his home in Snoke’s capital with a message from General Hux requesting his presence. It wasn’t far to the general’s villa. It was even a beautiful and pleasant walk if one cut through the ornamental gardens and orchard. But the very act of sending a summons was a deliberate move in the delicate chess game the two men were playing. It was a game of real soldiers and real horses and real blood. The prize was unspoken but they both were aware that Snoke was not the only man who could envision himself in the royal yellow robes of the Son of Heaven.  
  
The summons put Kylo Ren at a lower social standing than General Hux. In the strict sense of military man versus civilian, Hux was at a higher social level. But no one was granted the Supreme Leader’s ear like Ren was. Ren was Snoke’s prodigy—his personal experiment in training Force users to reach levels of power unheard of among the old guards of the Jedi and the Sith.  
  
If Ren answered the summons, he was allowing Hux to make an advantageous move unopposed.  
  
With a frown, Kylo Ren crumpled the summons and handed them back to the messenger.  
  
“Please, send your master my regards. But I am not feeling well today.”  
  
He dismissed the messenger with a wave of his hand.  
  
Perhaps he would drift over to Hux’s villa in a few hours to see what the general was in such desperate need of.  
  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Kylo Ren waited until after dinner to make the trek through the gardens and orchards to General Hux’s villa. The sun was just setting and the crickets were just beginning to buzz. A slight chill hung in the air—a sure sign that summer’s warmth was a fleeting companion in these northern parts of the country. The crickets would not be singing for long.  
  
Kylo Ren’s mind drifted back to the lingering warmth of his childhood days in the damp and fertile southern regions. There were years when winter simply never came.  
  
He plucked a leaf from a shrub as he walked by causing the whole bush to shake as the branch swung when the leaf broke free from its stem. He rubbed it between his fingers on the leather of his black gloves before letting it fall and flutter in a lazy spiral to the ground. He didn’t watch the leaf as it fell. Ren clenched the hand that had held the leaf and clumped across the little decorative bridge over the decorative stream. On the other side, he returned to stone pathways. Hux’s villa was in sight. Two guards stood at the entrance.  
  
“Kylo Ren to see General Hux,” he told them as he approached.  
  
They stepped aside immediately. “We were told to expect you,” one of them said in a heavy northern accent.  
  
Ren was displeased. He should have waited until the morning. The guard who had spoken opened the gates to the courtyard and Ren entered.  
  
Hux’s steward met him almost immediately. The old man had been Hux’s father’s steward before he was Hux’s. His hair had gone completely white and he had a large bald spot in the center of his head that forced him to position the bun he kept his long hair in rather further back than was the custom. His eyes were still bright despite his age and he bowed to Ren as the younger man approached.  
  
“Welcome,” he said not even glancing twice at the fearsome helmet that Kylo Ren wore.  
  
Kylo Ren bowed slightly and waited as the old steward bowed a second time. This bow, Ren did not return.  
  
“Please, follow me,” the steward said motioning to his right. He did not lead Kylo Ren into the main room but around the house to Hux’s private study.  
  
“Is that Kylo Ren?” Hux’s clipped voice called from inside the study.  
  
“Yes, Master Hux,” the steward said. He motioned for Ren to enter the room.  
  
“Well, you took your time in answering my summons,” Hux said as Kylo Ren entered. He was at his writing desk his red hair catching the fire light and looking ethereal. He had a fresh white scroll placed over an older yellowed one and was delicately copying the calligraphy. The words were so stylized that Ren could not read them upside down across the table. They looked like poetry.  
  
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Ren said. “I simply came to ask if you are enjoying the last of the cricket song.”  
  
He knew it was a weak excuse. The sour look the general gave him was confirmation.  
  
“Perhaps this will remind you,” Hux said moving a crumpled ball of parchment to the center of the desk.  
  
Ren refused to respond. It was juvenile.  
  
“I believe this is your crumple,” Hux said.  
  
Ren had to respond. “You have no proof I crumpled that.”  
  
Hux looked half tempted to throw the paper ball at his head. Not that it would hurt him. He had a helmet on.  
  
Hux took a few slow breaths. “I didn’t ask you here to argue.”  
  
“That’s unfortunate. We’re very good at that.”  
  
The general ignored him. “I need a favor.”  
  
That was a new one. “A favor?”  
  
“Yes.” Hux steepled his fingers and leaned his elbows on his desk. “I’m getting married.”  
  
“Congratulations,” Ren said. Hux was already married. His wife was pretty, docile, and fat—everything that could be desired in a wife—but had yet to produce a son. It was not out of the ordinary for a man in his situation to pursue a second wife. Ren cast a glance around the study filled with scrolls and hanging art. Hux’s brush stand was covered in gold. The general could certainly afford a second wife.  
  
“Who are you marrying?” Ren asked after an awkwardly long pause.  
  
It appeared Hux had been waiting for him to speak because he immediately said, “One of Unkar Plutt’s daughters. Usually I wouldn’t even bother speaking with a petty warlord such as Plutt, but I’m sure you can see the advantages of such an alliance now that he has taken control of the north west mining regions. Productivity has at least doubled since he took charge.”  
  
“You need the mineral resources.”  
  
“ _We_ need the iron. The mines in the north east are floundering. We won’t have enough iron for arrow tips in two years.”  
  
Ren snorted. Though, he did not question Hux’s assessment of the north eastern mines. He did not believe that Hux was altogether altruistic when it came to this marriage. A lower ranking officer could have been married off to gain access to the Plutts’ iron. Hux wanted to control the arrangement. He wanted to control the flow of iron into the kingdom. It was a decisive move in the chess game.  
  
“Why does any of this concern me?”  
  
“I need you to go and fetch the bride.” Hux said it quickly as if he anticipated Kylo Ren to cut him off if he took too long.  
  
“Fetch the bride? You do have her parents’ permission to marry her, do you not?”  
  
“Of course! While it is the bride’s family’s responsibility to provide for the brides passage to the groom, I do not trust the quality of Plutt’s soldiers. They are little more than the bandits they claim to protect the people from. I want—no, need—you to travel to Jakku and escort the bride back to me.”  
  
“What are you concerned will happen?”  
  
“I don’t want _anything_ to happen. That is the point. This is the time of year when bandit attacks are most common, for example.”  
  
Kylo Ren could see the logic in Hux’s words. “But why should I go.”  
  
Hux had an answer for that too. “One, I trust your abilities. Two, I trust you not to get any ideas about the bride. Two, Supreme Leader thinks you are getting restless and is tired of having to pay to clean up your messes.”  
  
“Okay. But why would I want to go?”  
  
Hux shrugged. “Let’s say I’ll owe you one.”  
  
Kylo Ren considered. He was bored. He had not been on an assignment from the Supreme Leader since the spring. And the idea of being owed a favor by General Hux was appealing.  
  
“Fine,” he said after a moment. “I’ll fetch the girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may or may not be named after the Rune Scape quest . . .


End file.
